Resubmitting sitemaps affect Rankings?

[Sparetoolparts]

Hi Guys

I have recently re-submitted my sitemaps to google webmaster tools and I get the sneaking suspicion the amount of pages indexed has dropped, I was wondering was this possible? and if the so does this mean those pages that aren't indexed on webmasters tools have now lost their ranking?

 

[Ryan Scollon]

It can happen! Why did you re-submit your sitemap? Truth is, it might not be configured properly or your might have multiple sitemaps which I have come across a lot recently. If the pages are no longer indexed, they no longer rank on google. It doesn't mean you have completely lost your rankings, but it might take some time for the rankings to recover once you sort the issue out

 

[Sparetoolparts]

I added new products to the website and wanted to index them so I re-created my sitemap and re-submitted on the 04/05/2016

I have looked at my stats and found the following:

Index Pages - 1025,405 Dated 05/02/2016
Index Pages - 960,092 Dated 11/05/2016

That's a difference of 65,313 I have also spotted a drop in sales during this period too and visitor numbers dropped also from the 04/05/2016 from 886 visitors a day to 613 on Saturday and only recovering yesterday to: 947.

Should I try to get a backup copy of my old sitemap and resubmit this instead? do you think this would resolve the issue?

BTW I am submitting multiple sitemaps as I have over 1 Million SKU's

 

[Ryan Scollon]

It definitely sounds like you have an issue. I honestly can't say that by resubmitting the old one that it will fix all of the problems. Might be worth getting an expert to give it the once over.

 

[Sparetoolparts]

I have been digging deeper into this by looking my webmaster tools

And some of my feeds are showing more indexes and others less, but overall my site is down 65,313 indexes

 

[Ryan Scollon]

Hmm very strange. My best advice would be to get a technical SEO consultant to have a look at it.

 

[justinaldridge]

A million pages? Does your website really have a million pages? How many products do you really have? I doubt you have a million.

You should only be indexing the pages that matter. How does Google know which of your million pages are important?

Good structure, crawl paths, content/product prioritisation, are key here. I fear you are trying to index a ton of low value pages which is possibly why they are being deindexed.

 

[parkbogum]

Re-submitting a sitemap does not affect site rankings. Later it automatically re-crawled by the search engines.

 

[StevePoster]

I have recently re-submitted my sitemaps to google webmaster tools and I get the sneaking suspicion the amount of pages indexed has dropped

What's the purpose of resubmitting sitemaps? Indexing? There's so many ways to index your pages rather than this. Resubmitting sitemaps has nothing to do with rankings and kindly stop your suspicion and get back to your site to optimize it to the target audience, its the better way.

 

[Sparetoolparts]

my site does have over 1 million sku's & growing, the sitemaps are well structured based on manufacturers then categories then products.

I re-submitted my maps as I added new products and wanted to get them crawled faster some of my sitemaps were only indexing 1160 of 48000 products, where others were doing much higher so I made changes to these products and resubmitted, still no changes, for a few days in early may, my indexed pages increased (just post resubmit) they have now fallen again

My sales have also became quite inconstant some days well over the average others well below

Below are my stats from Webmasters:

Web pages
1,424,022
Submitted

652,192
Indexed

 

[Sparetoolparts]

I also have older sitemaps still on my webmasters account, they have some duplicate content no doubt but are well indexed, should I keep or remove these?

 

[Hireday.com]

Hi Sparetoolparts,

If this is impacting on your sales and visibility online, it might be better to consult with an expert that you can either meet with or speak directly to.

There are so many different things that could have happened, it is impossible to give good advice without access to more information than you can share on this board.

1,000,000 SKU's may lead to duplicate content (pages very similar to each other with only slight variations). Google may penalise you for this, or maybe they recognise them as distinct items and useful for customers. An expert should be able to advise you.

Best of luck!

 

[MaureenP]

Hi Guys

I have recently re-submitted my sitemaps to google webmaster tools and I get the sneaking suspicion the amount of pages indexed has dropped, I was wondering was this possible? and if the so does this mean those pages that aren't indexed on webmasters tools have now lost their ranking?

The date which you have mentioned here for complaining about to see drop in indexed pages in webmaster tool then it had happened because of bug which authority person of google had clarified on twitter. But now google has re-indexed all pages. I hope you have also seen those changes.

 

[Sparetoolparts]

I had a look MaureenP and my new stats are:

1,424,022 - Submitted

668,182 - Indexed

so not a massive Re-Index although the majority of my sitemaps were last crawled between the 26th-30th so hopefully at my next crawl the indexes will go up

 

[brettsalt1995]

A sitemap will not increase your ranking.

 

[MaureenP]

I had a look MaureenP and my new stats are:

1,424,022 - Submitted

668,182 - Indexed

so not a massive Re-Index although the majority of my sitemaps were last crawled between the 26th-30th so hopefully at my next crawl the indexes will go up

As per google, urls are reindexed but you told not reindexed till now then hope for the best or there is some another issue.